The Supreme Court has passed on a major opportunity to protect embryonic children from stem cell researchers. In a single sentence rejection, the court refused to hear a case brought by two scientists on behalf of "plaintiff embryos" to overturn an Obama edict to promote such research. The scientists argue the Obama edict is unethical.

A fertilized egg made of stem cells.

Highlights

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The case could have been a major blow to the Obama administration which has issued a number of edicts regarding health care and life that do not sit well, even with scientists.

In August 2010, two researchers, James Sherley of the Boston biomedical Research Institute and Theresa Deisher of Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute sued the administration for violating a ban passed by congress forbidding any research whatsoever on human embryos. The ban was passed in 1996.

Since then, Obama has permitted the research to go forward. He justified his position saying that research done on embryos created by in vitro fertilization was not an ethical issue.

Obama's one-man edict prompted the suit with resulted in a temporary injunction against the edict. However, since that initial victory for life, federal courts have shockingly sided with Obama, rejecting the claims of Sherley and Deisher.

Neither the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Health and Human Services bothered to respond to the suit's claims that such research was illegal.

Some scientists argue that embryonic stem cells have the potential to cure many diseases because stem cells harvested from embryos can become any kind of cell through manipulation in the laboratory. However, to obtain these cells requires the destruction of a human life.

Any ethical researcher will tell you that research that begins with the deliberate destruction of a human life, for the specific intent of research, is unethical. Consider the murder of an adult for the purpose of scientific dissection and study. There would simply be no debate, no matter how great the potential benefit of such a heinous deed would be.

However, since many scientists argue that embryos are not human persons, they use this as a legal - although quite immoral, workaround.

Without this key and fundamental understanding, that life begins at conception, there is no legal leverage to defend the unborn.

So as of now, unethical researchers are free to create as many lives in the laboratory as they wish, for the purpose of destroying them to develop multi-billion dollar treatments to cure various afflictions.

While this research moves forward, there remains another way to conduct stem cell research that does not require the destruction of human life. Adult stem cells have similar potential and although they are more challenging to work with, they too can grow into other types of cells.

Tragically, many researchers would prefer to work with the embryonic stem cells which can be manipulated more easily.

Steven Aden, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom helped litigate the case. He said of the law that it "is clear, and we had hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold its clear intent. Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments and violate federal law - especially in burdened fiscal times like these."

Pope Francis Prayer Intentions for July 2015
Universal: That political responsibility may be lived at all levels as a high form of charity.
Evangelization: That, amid social inequalities, Latin American Christians may bear witness to love for the poor and contribute to a more fraternal society.

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